Project: Foundation

Ok guys SO I have read a few of the build logs and felt I should start one for mine as they seam to go down well.

My Build is called foundation as that is what it is The Foundation for my final build "Exile" I am aiming to have Exile completed before summer 2013 (or at least before it starts to get a little hotter here in the UK).

My reason for this is we plan on emigrating to Australia in a few years and think I will defiantly need water cooling for how I run my rig over there. Also I like the quieter the better.

I started of spending about £300 on a Computer from a local shop (not a named brand) and to be honest it didn't take long for me to figure out he totally ripped me off. So began my journey into taking the thing apart and trying things new.

After a while I felt confident enough to build a rig for myself ... It didnt go to bad but was far from great. My custom Paint job was ok just got a little over zealous in a few places and had a Window with Vents !

Moving ahead I learnt more and gained more confidence and upgraded over time and build some basic set ups for the Mrs and Friends etc.

Moved location about a year ago and found my love for tinkering again and have been thinking of this overhaul for ages and with watching Loads of TTL youtube stuff wanted to go a little harder.

So here goes. Final part was Delivered today and have a hiccup with the Case having a damaged roof.Will contact the retailer tomorrow to find out what my options are.

Anyway here is just a Pic of the delivery to get started and when I start building will post more. It wont be nothing crazy exciting yet but hoping as it evolves with water cooling should be plenty of opportunities for people to add their personal input.

Thanks for your time and enjoy.

That is some very nice kit.

Overkill psu but a very nice one

GigaChunk said:

Overkill psu but a very nice one

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This is very true.

It's like christmas!!

Keep it coming, tell us and photograph EVERYTHING!

Thanks guys for the positive comments.

I do plan on running two GTX690's and also currently have one SSD and two Mechanical (1tb and 2tb) Drives But will be swapping that around in the near future.

Agreed at the moment the 1200i PSU is a little over kill and then the Two 690's is also.but I feel that will run more efficient once I get extra hardware running. In addition I feel it is also better to Have and not need, then need and not have.

Remember to keep us updated!

First Hurdle

Ok So Here is my First hurdle the damaged case.

The funny thing is I have ordered quite a few different cases of varying quality over the years and they have all come in a Hard Foam protection in the box.

Now as some may know there is another reviewer out there that tends to get excited about the type of foam it comes in. However I must say this is the first one I have ordered that arrived in a Soft foam and the case arrived Damaged.

The box was not beaten up so must be just one of those things.

That is that theory out the window then. I suppose it is just luck.

the e-tailer wasn't to bad and have arranged collection for the damaged one but had to order another one to get her for tomorrow.

So I think today will mostly be onboxing and oooohhhh'ing and Ahhhhhh'ing

Two 690's is a waste of money tbh dude, and a great deal of games will run WORSE with two than they will with one :/

tinytomlogan said:

Two 690's is a waste of money tbh dude, and a great deal of games will run WORSE with two than they will with one :/

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True story.

I went tri sli and the amount of games that actually use 3 cards are limited..should of got 2 680's instead but 3 cards fills a SR 2 nicely....
£400 just to fill a slot up is foolish really but i couldnt help it.

if thats what you want... why not

Enjoy mate , i know i would.. with that gear

Ray.......

Kinda Agree with some of what has been said, and yeah Tom I am aware that the performance of two 690's takes some what of a nose dive and the scaling is not up to what it should be and there are some games that will run worse if not at all with Quad Sli but lets face it I can always disable one of the cards and see how that goes (I think I saw that on a you tube video somewhere)

If all goes to plan and what im thinking is the 2 cards (quad SLI) will use less resources and therefore produce less heat from each card as they wont have to work as hard so will be easier to cool.

As I plan on having a Dual loop cooling solution (CPU on one Loop and GFX cards on the other) I am hoping with a nice 360 Rad up top and a chunky 240 in the front both on push pull and can drop the fan speeds right down for a near silent Rig.

Plus Two GTX 690's will look sweet (imo)

this should be good

Treble20 said:

Plus Two GTX 690's will look sweet (imo)

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Plus you could have a F@H E-Penis

Lesson One!

OK Hands up everyone that has learned a lesson the last couple of days ?

Anyone ? OK ,me, I did ...

Lesson one: Building a PC on the weekend when the kids are home from school makes it alot "ALOT" Harder !!!!

Anyway took some pics N stuff and will post them up shortly. Lets just say she is stable and Im happy enough for the moment !

tinytomlogan said:

Keep it coming, tell us and photograph EVERYTHING!

Click to expand...

It's all about pictures - awaiting them.

And So it begins

Ok guys as I said before First case was damaged real bad to the point the roof would not stay on. Sadly the Second roof was the same way but nowhere near as bad

SO I continued the build anyway as I am not best known for my patience. The benefit of having the damaged case a day early I got to play around with it and get a better Idea of layout.

Prep work was easy as Im not going water cooling YET just had to remove this stuff.


First decision to make was 200mm Bitfenix or 2x AF120 quits in the fronts ?


I went with the AF120's in the end and will either eBay the larger one or it will find its way into the wifes PC.

Time to assemble the cpu/mobo/h100i


I have to say that having previously tried an Antec 920,Intel RTS2011LC and Thermaltake CLW0217, The H100i had to be one of the easier to mount out of the lot. Stands to reason really as I believe Asetek makes all the others and Coolit make the ones for corsair.

As mentioned before I have built in different cases before and it may seam small but putting the back i/o plate in felt like Asus and Bitfenix talked to each other as it was a perfect fit.So in went the mobo.Nice and smooth.

I wanted the h100i in push pull and not happy with the grey sp120's that come with the cooler. I ordered some quite sp120's before hand and didnt like the thought of the ugly model corsair stickers looking out the roof so took the ones of the stock fans and stuck em to the top. not pretty but did the job.


Remembering that Iwanted to try the Fan up installation of the AX1200i I thought it a safe option to try the 8 pin power cable in both the passthrough or behind the mobo trick going uptop was very tight and didnt wana risk it. So poped open the cable kit and put the CPU power in behind the mobo.


With the extra cables for link and fans for the H100i. I wanted them to look as neat as possible and decided to pass them over/through the DIgiVRm cooling block and they sit pretty neat there.


I also Pre-purchased a USB extender cable as the case has 2 x Twin USb 3.0 ports on top and the two onboard usb 2 ports will be used for the h100i and the link commander I didnt want wasted ports ontop so went for this option instead didnt look to bad I think.


Also a TPM Module (that I forgot about and arrive in the post Sat morning)


Next removed the h100i cables to try a test fit in the roof and all I can say is... Like a glove !!! It was tight bit fit lovely

Pulled it back out and refit the cables and screwed it in, Job done.

Next stage Corsair link kit:

My plan was to hide this in the back panel somewhere but with the case coming with a free flopy drive to 5.25 bay drive thing I decided to use it in that and have it on the front of me case. This little bit of kit will allow me to control the fans,H100i and the light strips it comes with as well as monitor the PSU and other system stuffs.

Next up the pretty much pointless but nice to have Bluray burner. Top slot for the moment. More for ease of access for me then anything else.

Also I purchased a Optical Bay Stealth cover and installed that. Had to remove the draw face on the drive as it clipped the bottom of the cover.
Quick pop on the front and see what it looks like and I was a little pissed to see the colour match of the bay cover and case is off but have emailed Bitfenix and will see what happens about that.

Unboxing the RAM and GPU and man the reviews dont do these things justice. Compaired to the Vengeance Ram I had before this stuff is weighty and the 690 GTX just screams COME AT ME BRO !


Now looks like a half decent build coming on.

Now the PSU. After a brief panic of not finding the AX1200i link conect cable in the white cable Kit I realized it didnt come with one and just used the black one from the stock pack there is a nice little gap underneath the motherboard tray section that the cable hid nicely.

Really do not like the look of the usb connector cables will maybe have a go at braiding them or heat shrink if confidence is high enough.

Now to add 2x HDDS and 1x SSD. I didnt realy want these on show until I get my new SSD's so tried to hide them. You can see here in the bottom left, It didnt look right.


So with Most of stuff in now. Sata,PSU Cables drives etc I decided to put the drive cage back in as It managed to keep them all a little neater. Im not set on this idea and am looking for alternatives until my drives arrive but It dont look to bad. Luckyly the side window panel on the XL Shinobi Covers the drive bays nicely and dont notice to much.

So now for some time for external attention.Gonna get some blue on and now the colour match on the White is really Bugging me !!!!


At this point I had been ignoring the cables on the back side as I knew it would not be pretty ... So here we go brace yourself ...
OMFG !!! at this time of the day with the kids doing my head in so bad I just clipped em back and made them neater ( note* not Neat but NEATER !)

Other side looked ok

So panels on

Quick power on test

and now I needed to do something different now so banged some tunes on and Got the speaker kit out arranged my desk ready to drop it all in. Sorry didnt remember for pics at this point.

Add a few extra bits I bought so I could get the unit closer to the wall

Break at this point to cook some dinner and copy over the old OS files. After eats it was worrying for a while as had random shutdowns and boot problems after some cable wiggles and double checking, tweaking and adjusting to how I like all worked fine and booted lovely. A little bit of desktop customizing and adjusting corsair Link I Set the lights to 4 way mode random black ,blue and white it ended up in kinda cascading effect and looked nice not to ott.

The monitors are huge Both 27" But dunno if they will stay. either go back to one or sell one or the other and get another to match what ever is left.

No over clock yet

Had two moused mats extended editions. I had a play around with both and decided I liked the control one more so that is the mouse mat and the other is under the tower.

So here it is at the moment my Play zone, I know the cables will need to be neatened up on/under my desk but day was running out.

There is space for the Tower down to the left so It may move a few times over the next few weeks will have to see.

Any constructive comments welcome and peoples opinions are their own. this is what I like ... Today

Nice and elaborated pics ,
Also love that h100i with those fans !!

Ray.......